Her teeth were set close together, the sobs seemed tangled in her throat. It seemed to her that all the longing in her life was concentrated in that one passionate desire, that he should seize her in his arms now, hold her there--tell her that it had all been a mistake, that the ugly times were dreams, that after all he had cared--a little! The room swam round with her, but she pointed smilingly to the door, which her trim parlour-maid was holding open. And Mannering went. CHAPTER IX THE FALTERING OF MANNERING Mannering left by the afternoon train for Hampshire, where he was to be the guest for a few days of the leader of his party. He arrived without sending word of his coming, to find the whole of the house party absent at a cricket match. The short respite was altogether welcome to him. He changed his clothes and wandered off into the gardens. Here an hour or so later Berenice's maid found him. "Her Grace would like to see you, sir, if you would come to her sitting-room," the girl said, with a demure smile. Mannering, with something of an inward groan, followed her. Berenice, very slim and stately in her simple white muslin gown, rose from the couch as he entered, and held out her hands. "At last," she murmured. "You provoking man, to stay away so long. And what have you been doing with yourself?" Her sentence concluded with a little note of dismay. Mannering was positively haggard in the clear afternoon light. There were lines underneath his eyes, and his face had a tense, drawn appearance. He did not kiss her, as she had more than half expected. He held her hands for a moment, and then sank down upon the couch by her side. "It was not exactly easy work--up there," he said. She noticed the repression. "Tell me all about it," she begged. His thoughts surged back to those three weeks of tragedy. His personal misery became for the moment a shadowy thing. The sorrows of one man, what were they to the breaking hearts of millions? He thought of the children, and he shuddered. "It isn't so much to tell," he said. "I have been to a dozen or so of the largest towns in the North, and have taken the manufacturers one by one. I have taken their wage sheets and compared them with past years. The result was always the same. Less money distributed amongst more people. Afterwards we went amongst the people themselves--to see how they lived. It was like a chapter from the inferno--an epic of loathsome tragedy. I have seen the children, Berenice, and God help the next generation." "You must not forget, Lawrence," she said, "that character is an essential factor in poverty. Poverty there must always be, because of the idle and shiftless."